Human potential of the child population: understanding and assessment

The reducing number of children in Russia is a key challenge to the country’s socio-economic development as this category is a framework for human potential of the entire population. In addition to the problem of quantitative loss of the child population, there is a problem related to the deteriorating quality of its characteristics, in particular its health potential. In this regard, issues of assessing the human potential of children become more urgent. The purpose of the article is to analyze the theoretical and methodological approaches to studying the human potential of the child population, as well as to develop the author’s view on its study. The paper applies an integrated approach that combines principles of activity and adaptation approaches that determined the validity of considering the formation and development of the human potential of children taking into account age characteristics. The authors developed an index method of assessing the formation of human potential of the child population based on the calculation of the integral indicator for three sub-indices: health, intellectual and socio-cultural development...